Grant: Operating Grant

We will use information and samples collected for an ongoing project to identify ways of reducing unnecessary interventions in women found to have precancer by cervical cancer screening. Our first goal is to better understand why some women found to have precancer on cervical biopsy, have no precancer on the cervical treatment specimen. Cervical precancer treatment can weaken the cervix and lead to complications in future pregnancies, such as preterm birth. This is why we want to identify factors we could act on to reduce the number of women who are treatment unnecessarily. We will investigate the role of pathology diagnosis on the biopsy, and investigate factors linked to spontaneous regression of the lesion between biopsy and treatment. We will also look at the viral characteristics of the human papillomaviruses (the cause of cervical precancers) found in the cervical specimens. In another analysis, we will investigate if some patients and/or disease characteristics would help further define women truly at risk of recurrence of precancer after treatment. We firmly believe that, in combination, those analyses will help balance benefits and harms from cervical cancer screening, by enabling more targeted intervention strategies.